A new exhibition, “Fortuny, a Spaniard in Venice,” opens this week at the Palais Galliera. It focuses on the work of the polymath painter, inventor, and designer who, working in tandem with his muse and wife, Henriette Nigrin, conjured the idealized past—specifically, ancient Greece and the Renaissance—in his fashion and textile designs. Fortuny’s best-known design is the Delphos dress, a column of whisper-thin satin, pleated using a secret, patented technique, and ornamented with Murano-glass beads and cords. These dresses, in marvelous colors, were coiled and sold in small round boxes. They have always been at once à la mode and outside of fashion. As Marcel Proust (whose character Mme. de Guermantes wears Fortuny) put it, the Spaniard’s designs were “faithfully antique but markedly original.” An opinion seconded by an anonymous speaker in a 1923 Vogue article who declares: “Fortuny doesn’t make new things. Anyone could do that.”

While it’s true that the classical inspiration of the Delphos dresses in particular give them a “timeless” aspect, they are not without novelty. Associated with the Aesthetic movement, whose adherents bucked Victorian convention as they avidly pursued beauty, the Delphos was first introduced in 1907. The dress predates the fashion uprising lead by Paul Poiret, who is credited with revolutionizing fashion by freeing women from the corset (his hobble skirts constrained them in other ways). Though these satin dresses would later be collected and worn as eveningwear by great beauties like Gloria Vanderbilt, Tina Chow, and Natalia Vodianova, at the time they were worn as dishabille among intimates. They revealed, celebrated, and idealized the female form. As Vanderbilt rhapsodized to Vogue in 1969, “It was Fortuny’s idea that woman is always something more than woman . . . a flower . . . an urn . . . a statue . . . . They are like one’s skin . . . . They are so voluptuous, and sort of mold themselves to the body in a kind of marvelous way. Yet they are so very fragile, delicate . . . tender.” Add enigmatic, too.

In the 110 years since Fortuny patented his method for pleating (customers returned their dresses to the company for cleaning and re-pleating), his method has not been decoded. Or has it? The final piece in the Palais Galliera show, which is said to evoke the world of Fortuny, is a remastered Delphos gown. Unlike an inspired-by Mary McFadden remake, or even a floaty wonder from Valentino’s Spring 2016 couture show, some of which were created in collaboration with the house of Fortuny, this new Delphos, says company creative director Mickey Riad, “unlocks the founder’s secret.” While Riad can’t say his process is exactly the same as the Spaniard’s, he’ll fully vouch for the results. It turns out that Diane von Furstenberg has played the role of fairy godmother to the Riads in the sense that she encouraged them to think big. From her, they understood that their jobs were, explains Riad, “not just about preserving [history as it was], but about preserving Mariano Fortuny’s spirit, his enterprising spirit and his innovative side.”

Though months in the planning, the “Fortuny, a Spaniard in Venice,” speaks to current issues beyond fashion. Countering a tide of xenophobia, it reminds us dream(er)s can’t be contained. Riad jokes that “Fortuny is this quintessentially Italian company that’s never been owned by an Italian.” (It passed from the Spanish-born founder to the American Elsie McNeill Lee, later Countess Elsie Lee Gozzi, and then to the Egyptian-born Maged Riad.) Scholar Silvia Bañaraes has described the expatriate Nigrin as “French by nationality, Spanish by marriage, and perhaps Venetian at heart.” The Fortuny show is a reminder that art carries no passport and pushes boundaries—by design.